Dr. Laura on the Radio

Menu

Category Archives: Violence

Naomi Campbell is at it again. She allegedly (that’s for legal purposes) bopped her driver hard on the back of his head, which thrust his face into the steering wheel. He called the police; she ran away. No charges were filed…again!

She’s been accused of violent outbursts since the Nineties – money is paid/so-called anger management is had/community service is requested – but because she’s a “supermodel,” the money/hype/power behind that has kept her from the appearance she should be making: in JAIL, JAIL, JAIL. Ultimately, there have been no consequences that make a difference to her, and her sense of entitlement has grown to huge proportions.

Some background on her I found on the Internet: her father abandoned her and her mother at birth; her mother abandoned Naomi for a show biz career – Naomi was even involved in show business herself at a very tender age. I can’t be sure without knowing her up close and personal, or from psychiatric work-ups in the anger management sessions she supposedly had, but she sounds very much like she has borderline personality disorder. That does not mean she is insane. She’s perfectly competent and aware of her actions and knows right from wrong.

Personality disorders are consistent patterns of behavior that negatively impact relationships and work. People with borderline personality disorder are impulsive, unstable in their moods, and have chaotic relationships (where they go back and forth from “love” to “hate,” depending upon whether or not they are getting their way). They tend to see things in extremes: all good or all bad. They also typically view themselves as victims of circumstance, and take little responsibility for themselves or their problems (which is why they generally don’t improve).

Their histories show abandonment in childhood, a disruptive family life, poor communication in the family, and sexual abuse. Consequently, they experience feelings of emptiness and boredom, and displays of inappropriate anger, impulsiveness with money, substance abuse, sexual relationships, binge eating, shoplifting, and more.

They don’t tolerate being alone, which brings me back to a reported quote by Ms. Campbell published in 2006 in the UK’s The Independent: “Anger is a manifestation of a deeper issue, and that, for me, is based on insecurity, self-esteem and loneliness.”

It’s sad, but the reality is that if there had been serious consequences for her behavior (rather than her being allowed to dodge prison time), then she might be more careful with the well-being of others.

Remember Columbine? Two Nazi-loving narcissistic sociopaths murdered teachers and students in their school because it would put them in the spotlight of history…..forever.

No one stepped forward to stop them.

The police stayed outside the building.

Horrendous mishandling caused many innocent lives to be lost.

Fast forward 11 years.
Another wacked-out gunman with a bolt-action hunting rifle came onto a Colorado middle school parking lot and starting shooting at students. He had just wounded two students and seemed ready to massacre more when a tall, skinny teacher (6’5″ former college basketball player who oversees the school’s track team) decided that this massacre just wasn’t going to happen. He saw the bad guy who was about to reload the chamber and decided that was THE moment. He ran and tackled the shooter, wrapped his arms and legs around him like a strait jacket from head to toe, and held him for police. Another teacher came to help keep the creep on the ground.

The two wounded students were hospitalized; one was released and the other was listed in critical condition.

The teacher’s name? DAVID BENKE.

By the way, the system allowed the gunman to be walking among us. The bad guy, Bruco Eastwood, has an arrest record in Colorado dating back to 1996 for menacing, assault, domestic violence and driving under the influence. That’s some arrest record – the newspaper account I read did not mention prison time where children would be safe from him.

When interviewed, the father of the creep said: “There’s nothing you can say about it. What can you say? Pretty dumb thing to do. I feel bad for the people involved.”

Dumb?? When you’re talking about attempting to murder children?

As for Benke, he still wishes he could have done more: “It bugs me that he got another round off” before being taken down.

I am all for a trained and armed faculty member or security person on the grounds of every school in America. Self-defense is a primary right of every living creature.

My respect goes to Mr. Benke. I admire guts, grit, and the compassion to risk to protect the lives of others, especially children.

The community should set up a trust account for him so that when he retires, he will be taken care of for the rest of his life. That’s a small thing for saving the lives of so many children, don’t you think?

In Port St. Lucie, Florida recently, a six year old was handcuffed (actually, one handcuff was put over both hands – she was a little girl), and hauled off to a mental facility. The parents were all hysterical and angry that their “little baby” was treated this way.

The mother, who works in day care, said “There is absolutely nothing wrong with my child.” Her father said that what happened to his daughter was “just wrong.”

The school contacted this little girl’s parents several times about setting up a meeting to discuss her violent behavior in the classroom, but they never showed up. Hmmmm.

Here’s what happened on that particular day:

The kid had yet another tantrum in the classroom after the teacher simply asked her to do something, and the girl was taken to the principal’s office. The principal, 8 months pregnant, endured the kid yelling, throwing things, kicking the wall, throwing a calculator, electric pencil sharpener, telephone, container of writing utensils and everything else on the desk. The kid then physically attacked the pregnant principal, who called the police.

In my opinion, the police and the principal did exactly the right thing. Leave it up to the medical authorities to determine whether this girl is being extremely poorly parented or in need of mental health treatment.

There are those who cry over how little this girl is and wring their hands and say that there must have been some other way. No, there wasn’t. The parents did not take responsibility, and their shame was delivered as arrogance as they sought sympathy (and probably a lawsuit).

The school is supposed to be a safe place. This girl was, and is, a threat to other students, the faculty, and herself. I stand behind the school, the teacher, and the principal. I wish we could arrest the parents for negligence in letting their daughter’s behavior get this far.

Elizabeth Ann Lambert has been suspended indefinitely from playing college women’s soccer. And that is a good thing.

During the Mountain West Conference Women’s Soccer semi-final recently between Brigham Young University and the University of New Mexico, BYU scored the only goal during the first half. BYU’s outstanding player, Kassidy Shumway and the BYU scorer, Carlee Payne paid the price for that.

According to the New York Times and what you can see on YouTube (in case you missed the news reports at the time) was a level of violence that escalated horrendously.

Payne gave a slight “dig” with her elbow to Lambert, who retaliated with a punch between Payne’s shoulder blades. What followed were tackles, kicks up to waist high, face punches and cleats aimed into the inner thigh, and Lambert’s final violent jerk on Shumway’s pony tail, which sent the six foot girl to the ground. It was frightening. I worried that the girl’s neck could have been broken. While Shumway was on the ground, not moving, one of Lambert’s teammates kicked a ball into Payne’s face.

That’s what I call feminist good sportsmanship: if you can’t beat ‘em….beat ‘em up!!

What was stunning was Lambert’s coach didn’t pull her out while her behavior was escalating. Equally stunning was the fact that the referee took no action outside of a yellow card for a “trip” move on Payne. It’s interesting that these officials did not see the punches, slaps, high tackles and that ferocious pony tail jerk.

The coach revved up her girls and then stood back while one of them went out of control. That’s a sad state of affairs. Of course, Lambert gave the usual mea culpa/ “my bad” apology, which was orchestrated in order to stay in the game. I’m glad it didn’t work.

Call me cynical, but the look on her face and the deliberateness of her violent yank had the aura of entitlement and rage. I don’t believe she’s sorry she did it. My guess is that she’s sorry she’s gotten heat over it.

She should never be allowed to play again…never… and that would send a message. Now, we’ve got to figure out how to deal with the coach and the referee.

I am sick to my stomach and soul that Scotland freed the Lockerbie bomber on compassionate grounds, allowing the terminally ill creep to die in his homeland, Libya, and rejecting American pleas for justice in the attack that killed 270 people.

Abdel Baset al-Megrahi served ONLY eight years of his life sentence. Because he’s been diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer, Scottish Judge Secretary MacAskill felt that since “Mr. al-Megrahi now faces a sentence imposed by a higher power,” he should be set free to die in his own bed in Libya. The mass murderer was convicted in 2001 of taking part in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 on December 21, 1988 – just before Christmas. The airliner exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, and all 259 people aboard and 11 on the ground died when it crashed.

This evil man has been given three months to live, or so the doctors guess. He is being given the luxury of dying in his country, in his town, in his home and with his family. Is that appropriately compassionate? Well, my take is that this is definitely compassionate, but definitely NOT appropriate.

It is an appalling, disgusting, sickening decision made by misguided notions of compassion. Compassion for this man is an insult to all the victims. The compassion should be directed to the victims and the ongoing, permanent suffering of their families. This is misplaced compassion, misdirected compassion, and inappropriate compassion. All the families of the victims got the bits and pieces of their loved ones returned to them in a box. The same should happen to al-Meghari.

Why is this happening? As one wise man once said, “Follow the money…or the oil.” Libya’s leader, Moammar Gadhafi collected al-Megrahi on his private jet. Western energy companies (including Britain’s BP PLC) have moved into Libya in an attempt to tap the country’s vast oil and gas wealth. Gadhafi, as reported by FoxNews.com, has renounced terrorism, dismantled Libya’s secret nuclear program, and accepted his government’s responsibility for the Lockerbie bombing. He has paid compensation to the victim’s families. I don’t know why he wants this vile creature back in Libya to die. Perhaps it’s because there’s more to the story…

When al-Megrahi landed in Tripoli, more than 1,000 young Libyans gathered to welcome him, cheering and waving Libyan flags. You should know that large public gatherings are rare in Libya, and tightly controlled by the government (especially on the tarmac where Gadhafi’s private jet lands). For a country that is supposed to have turned its back on terrorism, protecting, nurturing and celebrating a terrorist murderer is perplexing. Perhaps it means that the roots of Libya are still firmly planted in extremist mentalities. Or maybe it means that, having bowed to economic and political pressure, Libya wished to flex a bicep at the expense of 270 victims and their innumerable family members and friends.

To have put al-Meghari on a plane and then to welcome him as a hero, allowing him to die in peace is, in my opinion, an insult to the values of all civilization which believes that life is precious. He forfeited the preciousness of his life when he thought it righteous to murder, killing men, women and children who didn’t mean him or anyone else any harm.

Shame on Scotland. Shame on Libya. Shame on Scotland again, for not inflicting a death penalty on an unrepentant mass murderer. We do not show the world that we value life when we impose minor consequences on those who devalue and steal lives.

Of the people who commented on a recent news story in which several so-called “mistresses” and a wife blindfolded and bound a man and then Krazy Glued his penis to his stomach, 68% of them LAUGHED. They actually LAUGHED at this story.
They wouldn’t have laughed if it were the other way around, i.e., if several men glued a woman’s genitals closed.

I am amazed that these women don’t think they did anything wrong in this attack! I can immediately think of a whole bunch of things, including false imprisonment, assault, sexual assault – and that’s just for starters.

This is the story. The married man from Wisconsin planned to rendezvous with one of his several lovers at a motel. The four women (including his wife) planned to have one of them make that “date” so that then they could ambush him together. One of the women told investigators that she met him online through Craigslist, fell in love (online), and paid for his use of a motel room for the past two months. She, like the others, gave this man money. So, let’s review: these scummy women picked up a guy off the Internet, decided it was “love,” and paid for motel sex and gave him money! And they were expecting what? True romance, honesty, integrity and everlasting love??

I honestly can’t understand why they’re even angry. They brought this on themselves, by acting like they were somewhere between sluts and purchasers of prostitution. During this ugly episode, unbelievably, one of them asked him which woman he loved the most! What does love have to do with any of this? Another threatened to shoot him.

Apparently, his wife knew all about the honeys he had on the side, but instead of hitting the “eject” button, she decided to participate in this assault.

I get calls all the time from young, emotionally hungry young women (girls, actually), who think that an older, often married, man really loves them. It makes me so sad in my heart to hear these young women denying reality and setting themselves up for hurt.

20 year old Sahel Kazemi thought she had it made in the shade, because a celebrity, a former NFL football star, Steve McNair, took her partying in VIP rooms and on vacations for eight months. She believed him when he got her on his condo bed for sex that he was going to leave his wife of twelve years for her. He didn’t.

And then, one day, she saw some other young thing – probably another girl believing she was the one who was special to McNair. So, one night, when McNair was sitting on his sofa, likely asleep, she shot him twice in the head and twice in the chest. Then she sat down next to him, positioning herself so that she would fall into his lap, and shot herself (according to FoxNews).

Here was an attractive young girl (she had just turned twenty), a teenager, a high school dropout who had moved with a boyfriend at age 17 to Nashville from Florida. When she was 9, her mother was murdered, and, born in Iran, she and her family were persecuted for their religious faith.

This is a lot of turmoil and chaos and hurt for a young girl, and it is sad that so many family members and family friends tell this upbeat story about her, surprised that she would do such a thing. She was clearly emotionally tortured and vulnerable, needy, and naive. Her life began and ended in violence.

Men like McNair make me sick. I am sicker still, reading sycophants talk about his actions on the football field, as though the admiration he earned for running a ball around a field should count for more than the human lives he betrayed. He had a wife, with whom he had two sons, and two more sons from I don’t know where and I don’t know by whom. He was a 36 year old man who had been given great opportunities and huzzahs for his accomplishments. His response was to cater to his childish needs to “do” young women who (without question) would simply adore him.

It is sad that this ended in death for him and a naive and needy girl who believed that without him, there was no purpose in life.

It is sad that, as I speak, older accomplished men in business, politics, clergy, academe, and medicine are doing the exact same thing, in order to fulfill their needs to receive a naive reverence, to feel youthful and important in the reflection of a young woman, or because they feel entitled to spoils because of their celebrity or wealth or power.

I warn young girls every day to live a life of integrity and modesty with morals, so they won’t be used in such a way. Sometimes, though, a girl is so damaged that shortcuts seem the only way.

I can’t even guess how many times I’ve read about some so-called “mother” leaving her kids in cars to die in the heat, either because she “forgot” she had a child, or she was busy with partying, and then the sympathy goes to….the mother!

The same thing applies to women and their abusive “significant others” (choke). Recently, in North Carolina, a mother left her child in the care of a gang member. She knew he was a gang member when she made him her boyfriend-of-the- month. The self-declared Bloods gang member beat her 2-year-old son to death, with a combination of 41 blows, which ultimately burst his liver and caused his brain to bleed.

According to the report in The News & Observer, the murderer will spend the rest of his life in jail, and there’s no mention of the mother being held on any charges whatsoever: not negligence, not child endangerment….nothing.

When informing me of this story, one of my listeners wrote: “I am incensed that this woman was not fined or jailed as well. I guess our society no longer expects moms to protect their innocent, helpless children. No doubt, this is what the abortion mentality has done to us.”

I thought about her comment, and it holds water. Mothers farm out their kids to daycare, nannies, and baby-sitters. The “feminista” movement talks about women having power, yet treats women as helpless victims of sexual harassment when they get meaningless comments about their butts, and suggests that only men are responsible for domestic violence.

Power and responsibility are two sides of the same coin….or should be. To leave a child with a known, self-acknowledged gang member should be considered a criminal act, because it clearly puts a child in harm’s way.